


The Amber of This Moment

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Gen, Jack Has Issues, Season/Series 13, Temporary Amnesia, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Young Sam Winchester, Young Winchesters (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 07:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14350902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: Jack is tired of regret, pain, loss, and evil. The problem, he reflects, istime.Maybe it's time to get rid of it altogether.





	The Amber of This Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2018 spnspringfling challenge on LiveJournal.

Kneeling in the dark, in the wet cold, in the wake of death and loss and rising evil, Jack decided it was time to create his own dimension. He didn't like any of the ones he'd seen so far. 

There was so much to regret. Jack did not like feeling regret. He regretted the death of the security guard. He regretted being born into a world that didn't want him, or wanted him too much for the wrong reasons. He regretted things for others, too, like Sam and Dean's upbringing with no mother. He regretted every step of the road so far, to this dank dungeon in the worst part of a universe of torment and darkness. 

The problem, Jack reflected, was _time._ It passed without his consent—without anyone's—and he couldn't get it back. He couldn't take back that he had killed the security guard, that he had made Sam and Dean believe he'd killed Derek, that he had killed his mother, as he now understood it, by being born. He wanted those moments back, and he wanted them different. 

Sam and Dean had fought and defeated so many monsters, but they couldn't fight time, either. They could not have a happy childhood, or adulthood. It was too late. They couldn't get back their mother, their father, and all the other people time and evil and monsters had taken from them. 

So there should be no evil. No monsters. And no time. 

Upon this thought, the wretched room of torment and the imprisoned woman in it swirled around Jack. He felt the seconds swarming like gnats, the hours like wasps stinging him, and he pushed with his power, blasted them into an eddy then a tornado then a Category 5 hurricane, the days and years and decades of Sam and Dean's pain, and their mother's, and his mother's, the millennia of Castiel's and, yes, his father's... he pushed, and pulled it all apart, until it, and they, and he, were gone.

* * *

"Let's say goodnight to your brother," says Mary.

The little boy kisses the baby's forehead. "Goodnight, Jack," says Sam. 

"Goodnight, love," says Mary as she sets her baby in the crib. 

The baby sleeps. So do Sam and Dean, in their room with the twin beds and the stars on the ceiling, the toys and books and the Scooby-Doo nightlight. So does Mary, safe in her bed beside her husband, who does not stay up to watch a war movie, but kisses his wife goodnight after tucking his two older kids safe in bed. He doesn't remember war. He never thinks about it. 

No one has nightmares. No one burns. There are no demons. The Winchester household sleeps in peace until the dawn.

* * *

A year or two passes, though Jack knows it really doesn't, because he has said it won't—he has said no to time. He travelled in it, and changed it, and now he only lets it do what he tells it to do: make him grow. It is safe to begin talking, because he is “old enough.” He imitates the limited language patterns of young Sam, instead of speaking with the perfect articulation in his head, and still his (not really his) parents whisper about “special” and “genius.”

He brought the Winchesters to this place where nothing terrible ever happens. It never will, because he will not let it. Mary will never burn. John, Sam, and Dean will never become hunters, because there is nothing to hunt. He created this world for them, and he sat silent in his baby's body, even though he really wanted to talk to his family, as they talk to him, and play with him and feed and care for him like their own. Because he is their own, here. 

It's a good life for all of them. Safe, filled with kindness and school and toys, and not death or blood or torment. There are bedtimes and home-cooked meals, cartoons and coming home from work, and everyone gets the hugs they want, and gives them, and if there are tears, it's because Dean wants stay up and watch the movie he _knows_ his parents are going to put on as soon as he's asleep, or because Sam fell down and scraped his knee trying to play soccer with the bigger kids. 

Jack can't do anything five-year-old Sam can't do. He won't let himself. He is human now, and by his will, not a monster. There are no monsters. 

Sam is on to him, though. There was always, in every dimension, something about Sam.

* * *

Sam is not five years old, he is not in the right place, and Jack is not his brother.

He loves Jack, and Dean, and his parents, and he wants to grow up here, in this golden place where nothing ever happens. But he can't escape the feeling that he is already grown up, and something was supposed to have happened, and Jack knows what it is. His mind feels confined by being five. It feels not right. Sometimes, when he looks at his parents, it seems like there is something wrong with their faces. They look like other people suddenly, older. In pain. In another place. 

One night, alone in his room because Dean is nine years old and proud to take showers by himself instead of playing with toys in the bath, Sam makes sure his parents are otherwise occupied and finds Jack. 

"It's time for you to tell me about the other place," says Sam, and looking into Jack's innocent eyes, Sam thinks he has never seen anyone looks so sad in his entire life, and hopes he never will again. 

But he will. He knows he will.

* * *

Jack wonders if God is listening. He thinks he must not be, because Jack himself made this world, so it would only follow that he is God here. Yet when he asks what he should do, he feels like someone is listening.

Not just Sam, though Sam told him what he needed to know. He put his arm around Jack when Jack cried because Sam knew that he was not really a toddler barely old enough to talk. Not really his little brother. Sam knew that this world was not for him. 

“I believe you,” says Sam. “You're something else. More than just a person. You can make it right, can't you?” 

“What is right?” Jack asks, and it's strange, hearing his real voice from that tiny toddler's mouth, but Sam doesn't flinch. 

“I don't know,” Sam answers, and if Jack doesn't sound like he's two, Sam doesn't sound like a child at all. Jack looks at him, so tiny and vulnerable, just a beautiful little boy with a scab on his lip from falling off a skateboard last week, and Jack is even tinier, but he is not vulnerable at all. Sam can't know that Jack could destroy him, this house, this block, this town, this whole world and everything in it, with a thought and a word. 

Sam can't know that, actually, that's what he's asking Jack to do. 

“I was somewhere else,” Sam says at length. “And so was Dean. I think he remembers. He pretends not to, because he likes it here, but I…” He stops speaking, and he looks at Jack for a long moment, and tears form in his eyes. 

“You want the truth,” Jack says at last. “This is a lie. I tried to make it the truth, but I couldn't. I… I'm not God, after all.” 

“I don't know if I'll like the truth. I bet I won't, actually,” says Sam. He's crying, just like a real little boy. “And I just feel like… I'll miss you. I like having a little brother… and Dean, I know he's with me in that other place. But you aren't… are you?” 

“I will be,” Jack says, standing up. Sam hardly seemed to notice when he changed from the body of a toddler to a young man again. It's like he could always see him as he really was. “I'll find you and Dean again. I promise." 

“Are you going to take us back now?” Sam asks. 

Jack looks down at him, places his hand on his head for a long moment. 

“Yes,” he answers.

* * *

The dungeon, the world, and the feeling of being alive and real have not improved since Jack left them behind. No time at all has passed, because he would not let it… but it passes now, and he cannot stop or change it. His regret is here, and strangely, he finds he missed it. He knows God is here, and Castiel, and Sam and Dean, waiting for him.

And so is their mother, in an iron cage, eyes full of pain and fear and no recognition, the woman who has just bathed him, fed him sliced up hotdogs and macaroni and cheese, and read him a book where a baby bird thinks a dog, a cow, and a bulldozer are his mother, before his mother comes home. 

“Where are my boys?” Her hoarse, destroyed voice falls through the fetid dark to his ears. 

_I'm right here,_ Jack wails inside his mind. 

Out loud, he says, “I'll take you to them.” 

There is time again. Time to find freedom, for himself and Mary Winchester. Time for terrible things to happen, and perhaps wonderful things, too. Time to save Sam and Dean Winchester, and the world—the many worlds. If he is strong, and if God can hear him, and if there is as much love and bravery as there are monsters and hatred, he can help, perhaps, put everything to rights. 

In time. 

 


End file.
